Democracy Now! Blog

Organized labor will serve notice today on the bankers and the politicians that the young protesters of Occupy Wall Street speak for millions. The labor rally will signal just how far unions have come since that infamous day 41 years ago, when bands of construction workers rampaged through the Financial District and City Hall, writes Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez in today’s NY Daily News.

CUNY professor Frances Fox Piven recently spoke with Democracy Now!'s Mike Burke at the Occupy Wall Street protest. "I think we desperately need a popular uprising in the United States," Piven said. "I study movements. [None of us] know the exact formula, when those movements erupt. But it could be. And if that's true, then these people who are here are really wonderful." [includes rush transcript]

Today, award-winning journalist Amy Goodman announced that a final settlement has been reached in a federal lawsuit brought by Goodman and Democracy Now! producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar against the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and the U.S. Secret Service, challenging the policies and conduct of law enforcement at the 2008 Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities. Goodman and her colleagues were unlawfully arrested and subject to excessive force while reporting on public protest and political dissent surrounding the convention. [includes rush transcript]

"We’re talking about a democratic awakening," said Dr. Cornel West when he spoke with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman during a visit Tuesday night to the Occupy Wall Street encampment. [includes rush transcript]

Filmmaker Michael Moore describes how he was inspired to boycott Georgia by one of the people Democracy Now! interviewed at the protest outside the prison shortly after news of Troy Davis’s execution was announced. [includes rush transcript]

Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez writes in the NY Daily News that the idea that local post offices, the most visible neighborhood presence of our national government for more than 200 years, face financial default on Sept. 30 is truly astounding. Yet, that’s exactly what will happen unless the politicians in Washington act quickly.

As the United Nations Security Council considers the Palestinian bid for statehood, we speak with human rights lawyer, Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza and Vice President of the International Federation for Human Rights.

Troy Anthony Davis, who maintained his innocence until his last breath, was executed by the state of Georgia Wednesday night. As the world watched to see whether his final appeal for a stay of execution would be granted by the U.S. Supreme Court, Democracy Now! broadcast live for six hours from outside the prison grounds where Davis was ultimately killed by lethal injection at 11:08 p.m. EDT. [includes rush transcript]

In part two of our interview with veteran journalist Ron Suskind about his explosive new book, "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President," he examines the challenges faced by President Obama and his evolution as a leader. [includes rush transcript]

The U.S. hikers Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal have been released in Iran after two years in prison on charges of espionage. Bauer and Fattal were granted bail earlier today and handed over to Swiss diplomats. The pair were arrested in 2009, along with Sarah Shourd, while hiking near the Iran-Iraq border. We get reaction from Esther Kaplan of the Nation Institute, a colleague of the hikers who last year published an extensive investigation reporting that they were arrested on the Iraqi side of the Iran-Iraq border—not in Iran as the Iranian government has claimed. [includes rush transcript]

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
The holiday season is upon us. Sadly, the big retailers are Scrooges when it comes to paying their staffs. Undergirding the sale prices is an army of workers earning the minimum wage or a fraction above it, living check to check on their meager pay and benefits. The dark secret that the retail giants like Wal-Mart don’t want you to know is that many of these workers subsist below the poverty line, and rely on programs like food stamps and Medicaid just to get by. This holiday season, though, low-wage workers from Wal-Mart to fast-food restaurants are standing up and fighting back.

In our extended interview with Noam Chomsky, he discusses the case against participating in Libya’s civil war, the increasing isolation of Israel in the Middle East, and his shock at the Republican presidential candidates’ positions on issues such as climate change. [includes rush transcript]

Democracy Now! kicked off Pacifica Radio’s 9/11 anniversary special on Sunday with an hour of voices from our coverage in the past decade. The memorial broadcast began the way Sept. 11, 2001, began for many Pacifica listeners, with Amy Goodman reporting ‘live’ from New York, just a few blocks away from where the planes hit the World Trade Center towers.

In this Democracy Now! web exclusive, you can look back through a decade of our coverage of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath, the voices of peace and dissent as President George W. Bush led the nation into war, the attack on civil liberties and more.

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As the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, read a chapter of Amy and David Goodman’s book, "Exception to the Rulers," on 9/11, the families of the 9/11 victims who called for peace, the other September 11ths and more. The chapter is titled "Blowback."

We continue our interview with Ashley Joppa-Hagemann, the widow of a U.S. Army Ranger who confronted former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about her husband’s suicide ahead of his eighth deployment overseas. She calls for a military memorial, and notes she has not received a condolence letter from President Obama. We also speak with Jorge Gonzalez, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, about the campaign to end the redeployment of all traumatized troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Democracy Now correspondent, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, reports in The Nation magazine that one of Egypt’s most prominent activists faces prosecution in a military court for speaking out against the Supreme Council of Armed Forces that came to power following Mubarak’s ouster.

As the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, read a chapter of Amy and David Goodman’s book, "Exception to the Rulers," to learn how how the Pulitzer Prize–winning science reporter, William L. Laurence, was on the payroll of the War Department while also reporting for The New York Times on the U.S. attacks and their aftermath.

The discovery of reporter George Weller’s firsthand account of conditions in post-nuclear Nagasaki sheds light on one of the great journalistic betrayals of the last century: the cover-up of the effects of the atomic bombing on Japan.

DN! In Depth

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan — The corporate television newscasts spend more and more time covering the increasingly disruptive, costly and at times deadly weather. But they consistently fail to make the link between extreme weather and climate change.